if you don't want to live in the city, you shouldn't work there either.

What about those who live in the suburbs and also work in the suburbs?

My employer is based in the suburbs. When I took my current job, I actually moved out of the city to be closer to my place of employment.

That's a secondary market, as the companies based in the suburbs are generally reliant on the cities as well. They're just doing the business equivalent of residents looking for cheaper land outside the city, or else providing localized services to suburbanites.

Doc Daneeka:There are different types of suburbs. Some are just pure sprawl, with endless cul-de-sac developments (no sidewalks) and heavily-trafficked thoroughfares consisting mainly of big-box retail and chain restaurants (again no sidewalks). Others are organized more like small towns, with a distinct and walkable town center containing independent shops and restaurants, and surrounded by a grid of residential streets with sidewalks.

I've heard of stories about suburbs like these but didn't know they actually exist.

dantheman195:Wait, the cities support the suburbs and rural areas? Maybe out in fly over country, but here in New Jersey the suburbs and rural areas support the cities. Look up how this state does school funding, money gets confiscated from hard working New Jersey families and it is than transferred to areas like Newark, Camden, Trenton, Asbury Park to pay for schools and infrastructure. Some of these districts spend upwards of $40K per students and still have 50% dropout rates and the ones who still somehow manage to graduate can't even read.

It's absolutely disgusting that the New Jersey state government taxes Hard Working New Jersey Families™ to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide an education to it's citizens, especially those "city people". You know the ones I'm talking about. Yeah you do.

/i wonder if disdain for poor black people will play as well in Christie's presidential campaign as it did in his reelection bid

Frank N Stein:James!: Frank N Stein: UrukHaiGuyz: The burbs are a horrendous model of inefficiency. Do you really not understand how city services become more efficient and cheaper to deliver the higher the concentration of people is?

That said:

Living in cities also have a negative psychological affects on people. No imagine if people were forced to lived in the cities against their wills. shiat would be going down. fark efficiency.

What negative psychological effects?

UrukHaiGuyz: James!: Frank N Stein: UrukHaiGuyz: The burbs are a horrendous model of inefficiency. Do you really not understand how city services become more efficient and cheaper to deliver the higher the concentration of people is?

That said:

Living in cities also have a negative psychological affects on people. No imagine if people were forced to lived in the cities against their wills. shiat would be going down. fark efficiency.

What negative psychological effects?

You know, those. no imagine it for yourself

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=psychological+effects+of+city+life

If you think you city life is bad for your mental health, you should check out the correlation between rural living and voting Republican. It's absolutely ghastly.

ikanreed:jigger: To The Escape Zeppelin!: Clearly the solution is to force the poor out of cities and into the countryside. Then suburbanites can move back into the city, property values will rise and inner city schools will have more money to spend on education!

That's called gentrification and I've heard it's pretty bad.

You hear that, but it's not entirely true. Displacement hurts, but poor people are going to have a tough time of it anywhere, and increasing property values due to more economic stability boosts incomes in the area.

Like all economic changes, somebody tends to lose, but more people win than lose net.

And cities are learning how to mitigate that displacement, but in the end, I think the data shows more people tend to win than lose when it happens.

I live in an area that is rapidly gentrifying, and that is scaring the crap out of a lot of the industry that borders this particular neighborhood on three sides.

One place is running on a skeleton crew because (they claim) it would put them out of business to shutdown that site and move because of the cleanup costs (it's also in the early stages of getting enough evidence to get the feds around to declaring it a Superfund site). The have problems with arsenic runoff, creosote, all sorts of nasty stuff running into the waterways, and I'm not even bringing up the air pollution they create when they open the vents at 3AM after soaking railroad ties and utility poles in the creosote and you smell mothballs all across the area.

//They get fined all the time too. They get fines every year, and it's cheapest to just pay the fines and keep doing business as usual...

dantheman195:Wait, the cities support the suburbs and rural areas? Maybe out in fly over country, but here in New Jersey the suburbs and rural areas support the cities. Look up how this state does school funding, money gets confiscated from hard working New Jersey families and it is than transferred to areas like Newark, Camden, Trenton, Asbury Park to pay for schools and infrastructure. Some of these districts spend upwards of $40K per students and still have 50% dropout rates and the ones who still somehow manage to graduate can't even read.

So the next time you mouth breathers in fly-over country make blanket idiotic derpy derp statements on how the suburbs and the rural areas are supported by the cities, realize not everyone lives in your crappy state.

Hey, at least my crappy state here in flyover land doesn't spend $40,000 per student so they can barely read. Stuff like that isn't exactly making me want to leave Kentucky anytime soon. My son is about to start at one of the top rated high schools in the nation.

That plus I live in Louisville. $130k for 4 bedroom 2 bath house in a decent neighborhood and I have sidewalks to walk to most stores that could want just a mile or 2 away. If I drive for 10 minutes I'm in a neighborhood with dozens of small independent bars, restaurants, and stores where most people park on the street and then walk between all of them. Sure, the rest of the state may have its issues but I love this town!

Doc Daneeka:I've come to have a more nuanced view of the suburbs over time.

There are different types of suburbs. Some are just pure sprawl, with endless cul-de-sac developments (no sidewalks) and heavily-trafficked thoroughfares consisting mainly of big-box retail and chain restaurants (again no sidewalks). Others are organized more like small towns, with a distinct and walkable town center containing independent shops and restaurants, and surrounded by a grid of residential streets with sidewalks.

I can't stand the former but rather like the latter.

The suburbs aren't ever going to go away, so it's worth thinking through what kind of suburbs we want to have. Urban planning for the suburbs. I'm all for walkable small-towns with a central district containing at least some locally-owned businesses.

I know that everyone bangs on Detroit, but Detroit did this and it's pretty nice. Instead of having "downtown Detroit", you have a bunch of little downtowns that do their own thing.

Heck, Silicon Valley is basically this. Of course, since you can't drive around Silicon Valley because of the traffic, you're stuck in your own little 6 block downtown instead of being able to jump around.

dantheman195:Wait, the cities support the suburbs and rural areas? Maybe out in fly over country, but here in New Jersey the suburbs and rural areas support the cities. Look up how this state does school funding, money gets confiscated from hard working New Jersey families and it is than transferred to areas like Newark, Camden, Trenton, Asbury Park to pay for schools and infrastructure. Some of these districts spend upwards of $40K per students and still have 50% dropout rates and the ones who still somehow manage to graduate can't even read.

So the next time you mouth breathers in fly-over country make blanket idiotic derpy derp statements on how the suburbs and the rural areas are supported by the cities, realize not everyone lives in your crappy state.

Technically..... NJ is a "city". We don't think of it as such because its on the outskirts of NYC which has one of the highest population densities in the world. However, NJ as a state has a population density of approx 1200 people per square mile. It's comparable in density, as a state, to large cities like Chicago and Miami.

Mrtraveler01:Doc Daneeka: There are different types of suburbs. Some are just pure sprawl, with endless cul-de-sac developments (no sidewalks) and heavily-trafficked thoroughfares consisting mainly of big-box retail and chain restaurants (again no sidewalks). Others are organized more like small towns, with a distinct and walkable town center containing independent shops and restaurants, and surrounded by a grid of residential streets with sidewalks.

I've heard of stories about suburbs like these but didn't know they actually exist.

The suburbs here in the Midwest are more like the former.

More often than not this depends on when the area was built. Post-1960 or so is when builders forgot to center commmunities around their homes. Older areas tend to have a great walkable city plan.

Or are you just being obtuse and ignorant like in every other thread I've seen you in today?

I've got some compelling shiat for you here (link).

That's not even the half of it...

You see, I'm a Negro jazz musician, and like all Negro jazz musicians I have an irresistible urge to rape white women when I smoke the marihuana weed. My knuckles are always white from inner tension, and my pants are often crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when I can't find a rape victim. I'm usually just staggering around and babbling. Additionally, I have absolutely no respect for authority. I fear nothing and will attack - for no reason - with every weapon at my command.

Or are you just being obtuse and ignorant like in every other thread I've seen you in today?

I've got some compelling shiat for you here (link).

That's not even the half of it...

You see, I'm a Negro jazz musician, and like all Negro jazz musicians I have an irresistible urge to rape white women when I smoke the marihuana weed. My knuckles are always white from inner tension, and my pants are often crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when I can't find a rape victim. I'm usually just staggering around and babbling. Additionally, I have absolutely no respect for authority. I fear nothing and will attack - for no reason - with every weapon at my command.

Whoever spouts this doesn't know how the world really works. More highways move the congestion elsewhere because we're driving on a system that was designed for about 1/3rd of the traffic volume of today.

The real problem is "people can't afford to live near work unless they're willing to live like college kids or ghetto inmates".

I'd need to make $60k/yr to live within walking distance of my job. It pays about half that. That is, unless I wanted to get a roommate for a 2 bedroom, and I still wouldn't be able to afford all that wonderful nightlife that exists around that neighborhood, whereas now at least I can afford to stay in the city after work once a week or so to go and have a drink and hear some music.

Lollipop165:dantheman195: Wait, the cities support the suburbs and rural areas? Maybe out in fly over country, but here in New Jersey the suburbs and rural areas support the cities. Look up how this state does school funding, money gets confiscated from hard working New Jersey families and it is than transferred to areas like Newark, Camden, Trenton, Asbury Park to pay for schools and infrastructure. Some of these districts spend upwards of $40K per students and still have 50% dropout rates and the ones who still somehow manage to graduate can't even read.

So the next time you mouth breathers in fly-over country make blanket idiotic derpy derp statements on how the suburbs and the rural areas are supported by the cities, realize not everyone lives in your crappy state.

Technically..... NJ is a "city". We don't think of it as such because its on the outskirts of NYC which has one of the highest population densities in the world. However, NJ as a state has a population density of approx 1200 people per square mile. It's comparable in density, as a state, to large cities like Chicago and Miami.

New Jersey as a state only has 1/3 the population density of those flyover cities of Dallas and the like. Which, considering the areas of "Pineys, Pineys Everywhere", "The Hill People", and "The Vast Wilderness of Rednecks and Retired Hippies", means that the more dense suburbs are more of a "city" than the things those rubes who've never actually seen a city except in a book call one.

Goimir:Which, considering the areas of "Pineys, Pineys Everywhere", "The Hill People", and "The Vast Wilderness of Rednecks and Retired Hippies", means that the more dense suburbs are more of a "city" than the things those rubes who've never actually seen a city except in a book call one.

My freshman year NYU roommate is from rural Iowa. I brought her to my parent's very suburban Bergen County home and she insisted that it I grew up in a city. She said it was more urban than Milwaukee, which is the only city she had ever really been to (besides NYC). I thought she was crazy until I went to go visit her. What she considers suburban I considered to be very, very, very, very rural.

She's since come to the realization, now that she's been in NYC for 15 years, that she grew up in cow country and not suburbia :-)

Goimir:New Jersey as a state only has 1/3 the population density of those flyover cities of Dallas and the like.

1/3 of Dallas's population density? According to Wiki, the Dallas metro area has a population density only slightly below the state of NJ.

Lollipop165:Goimir: Which, considering the areas of "Pineys, Pineys Everywhere", "The Hill People", and "The Vast Wilderness of Rednecks and Retired Hippies", means that the more dense suburbs are more of a "city" than the things those rubes who've never actually seen a city except in a book call one.

My freshman year NYU roommate is from rural Iowa. I brought her to my parent's very suburban Bergen County home and she insisted that it I grew up in a city. She said it was more urban than Milwaukee, which is the only city she had ever really been to (besides NYC). I thought she was crazy until I went to go visit her. What she considers suburban I considered to be very, very, very, very rural.

She's since come to the realization, now that she's been in NYC for 15 years, that she grew up in cow country and not suburbia :-)

Goimir: New Jersey as a state only has 1/3 the population density of those flyover cities of Dallas and the like.

1/3 of Dallas's population density? According to Wiki, the Dallas metro area has a population density only slightly below the state of NJ.

I was going by "city proper". Which looking at a map, is dumb because the city isn't even contiguous. But for purposes of the article, you should go by the actual city. Metro areas contain suburbs.

Goimir:Peki: Goimir: The real problem is "people can't afford to live near work unless they're willing to live like college kids or ghetto inmates".

You're thinking like a single person, who aren't generally the people who buy homes.

You don't buy a home close to work. You buy a home in a good school district for your kids.

/this is the origin of the suburbs

And drive 500 miles a week?

Versus having your kids at a failing school where they get beat up, teacher-student ratio is 50:1, you've got broken, 20 year old textbooks. . . I don't know many parents who wouldn't take that drive and laugh the entire week doing it.

/one of many reasons I'll take online K-12 for my kids instead of sending them to public schools

Peki:Goimir: Peki: Goimir: The real problem is "people can't afford to live near work unless they're willing to live like college kids or ghetto inmates".

You're thinking like a single person, who aren't generally the people who buy homes.

You don't buy a home close to work. You buy a home in a good school district for your kids.

/this is the origin of the suburbs

And drive 500 miles a week?

Versus having your kids at a failing school where they get beat up, teacher-student ratio is 50:1, you've got broken, 20 year old textbooks. . . I don't know many parents who wouldn't take that drive and laugh the entire week doing it.

/one of many reasons I'll take online K-12 for my kids instead of sending them to public schools

You're thinking like someone who makes over $50K/yr. Most of the people I know live in the best area they can afford.

They don't laugh about anything. They biatch that their school district sucks at the lunch table.